I need to take a look at the book -- but this has GOT to be either an electronic flaw in the picture itself, or a simple printing error on that page. Rest assured that if anything that peculiar-looking and real had shown up on any of the Pioneer photos, we would have heard about it by now.

I need to take a look at the book -- but this has GOT to be either an electronic flaw in the picture itself, or a simple printing error on that page. Rest assured that if anything that peculiar-looking and real had shown up on any of the Pioneer photos, we would have heard about it by now.

I'm inclining towards that interpretation myself. There is one other image in the book in the Jupiter section which is described as a computer manipulation of several Voyager images to get a 'pole down' (or up) view of Jupiter.

I had a look at the Pioneer Jupiter images in the online copy of Pioneer Odyssey, there are three possible candidates for the image in the book. (here, here and here.) I'm beginning to suspect that these images were 'stiched' together to make the image shown on page 203 and that the 'spacecraft' was added at that time, I'm going to check the picture credits in the book.

*Anyway, it would have been physically impossible for Pioneer to take a picture of an object moving at all rapidly between the spacecraft and jupiter. Pictures were scanned one pixel at a time by the rotation of the spacecraft and the stepping of the 1-inch "telescope" one pixel per rotation, and built up over 10 min to 1/2 hour.

This is an update to my earlier post, which I sent without having a copy of the book to hand.

The computer manipulated image of the polar clouds of Jupiter is on page 213 of the edition I have.

After carefully comparing the picture on page 203 with the most likely of the images in Pioneer Odyssey I think that the p152 image is the best match, but I still cannot link the image to a specific picture.

Checking the image credits at the back of the book indicates that the picture in question is credited to NASA.

The more I look at the image I cannot shake the suspicion that someone added the 'spacecraft' to the image, but without being able to match the picture to a published image I will not say this for certain.

Ed, you're also right, there is no way that Pioneer could have captured the image in question.

What kind of image is this, could it maybe a drawing ?Jupiter appears as an "hexagonal" network of red and yellow colors (much like C-60, a fullerene )The rocket is clearly added afterwards, maybe this was a joke for the book editor ?

It is definitely not an original part of the image. It is out of sync with the IPP scan lines, so instrument noise is out of the question. It is either something drawn in or a defect in the book printing.

It appears to me the author or illustrator of the book had a little fun and drew in the image of the spacecraft.

I think this is how the Mars Face got its start.

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"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined, and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

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